Delegation

Delegation is identified as one of Matter’s top soft skills that is linked to performance and career success.

What is Delegation?

Learning how to delegate is one of the most challenging skills for leaders to develop. Leaders are often used to relying only on themselves and their efforts to get things done.

However, it is an essential aspect of leadership to recognize the skills in those you lead and empower them to take ownership.

Matter’s Definition of
Delegation

Assigns manageable tasks, responsibilities, and authority to others appropriately.

Matter is based on an ontology of over
30 recommended skills.

Great Delegators You May Know

Andy Rachleff

After taking the helm of online investment firm WealthFront, initial business strategies faltered. Instead of taking the problem on entirely by himself, Rachleff adopted a “less DIY, more delegation” approach that allowed his team to solve problems in a more agile way. As a result, WealthFront was able to shore up its challenges and raise $20 Million in VC funding in 2013.

Renee Bemis

Driftless Glen Distillery, a prominent whisky maker, owes a huge part of its success to transparent business practices and workflows. Teams are encouraged to delegate and distribute the workload, thus leading to collaboration and higher team performance. Bemis, Driftless’ CEO, has said in an interview, “We’re transparent in front of the entire team: who’s working on what, when is it due, what issues are they having? It makes everyone want to do better at their jobs.”

Warren Buffett

When describing Buffett, biographer Roger Lowenstein said, “He picked the chorus line, but didn’t attempt to dance.” His hands-off delegation style has allowed businesses of all types the space to work their magic and make their mark, and that freedom is a big reason why they work with Berkshire Hathaway. At the same time, Buffett has enabled himself to spend significant time every day to work on his own knowledge and skills.

Why Delegation Is Important

Ownership

Delegating tasks to your team shows that you respect them and trust in their abilities to get things accomplished. This, in turn, fosters a culture of ownership and teamwork.

Innovation

When your team feels ownership over their work and empowered to make decisions, they are more likely to share ideas and feedback freely.

Scaling

Leaders know that success is part strategy and part people (execution). Scaling is not a one-person show. Knowing how to delegate responsibilities and authority to others is the key to business success and scaling.

What Delegation is NOT About

Micromanaging

The most difficult part of delegation is the idea of giving up control. Once you’ve delegated responsibilities, trust that your team will have the ability to tackle them and follow up with you once they’re done. Nobody appreciates a helicopter leader.

Taking The Credit

When your team hits a homerun, don’t steal their thunder. Instead, make sure that credit is given to all who contributed to the win. Taking personal credit for your team’s accomplishment will lead to resentment and lower morale.

Doing Less Work

Delegating is never about doing less work. In reality, delegation is about empowering your team and sharing responsibilities so that you as a leader can personally tackle more impactful projects that require your personal attention.

Abilities That Lead To The Mastery of Delegation

Checking-in

Check-ins are useful to ensure that everything is on track and can head off potential problems. Establish agreed-upon check-in times. These can be as simple as a 15-minute meeting with those working on the delegated work.

Clarifying constraints

Spend time identifying possible constraints with those working on the delegated tasks. The idea is not leaving any room for confusion and set people up to make progress without needing frequent approvals which will slow the work down and make people feel micromanaged.

Confirming shared understanding

One of the most common mistakes made in delegating is assuming that employees understand what is expected. You should ask probing questions to make sure people understand all aspects of what’s required.

Defining what done means

Take the time to discuss the work with those involved and agree upon what must be done. The more time you take to discuss and agree upon the end result or objective, and achieve absolute clarity, the faster the job will be done once the person begins. What you define as done needs to be clearly measurable and not subject to interpretation.

Delegating the entire job

You should strive to delegate 100% of the work. You want people to feel empowered as great leaders will reject being micromanaged.

Delegating with discussion

Invite questions and be open to suggestions. There is a direct relationship between how much people are invited to talk about the job and how much they understand it, accept it, and become committed to it. You need to delegate in such a way that people walk away feeling, ‘‘This is mine; I own it; I’m going to do a great job.’’

Focusing on outcomes, not process

There are many different ways to achieve the same goal. The person you delegate to will likely approach the work differently than you would. A great delegator needs to embrace this discomfort. You should trust that you picked the right person for the work and set the person up for success by clearly defining goals and constraints.

Managing by exception

Managing by exception is a powerful time management tool that you can use to work more efficiently with other people. If the work is on track, and on schedule, managing by exception means that the person does not have to report back to you. If you don’t hear anything, you can assume that everything is going well.

Trusting people

Trusting people will result in a more collaborative and productive company. Without trust, your company will be unlikely to retain top talent as they will reject being in a company where they are micromanaged. Workers who feel trusted are more likely to take their tasks seriously and do the best work of their lives.